Todays Manager

If you are responsible for managing other people, you will be likely to conduct performance appraisals for your team. A performance appraisals gives an opportunity to review your employees’ past performance, plan their future work and role within the organization, and mutually agree on specific goals.

Ideally performance appraisals should be done on a timely manner giving timely feedback to the employee and it should not be a once in a year affair.

As a appraiser or the manager the onus is more on you how you conduct the appraisal review, be it for good performers or be it for average or bad performers. The three basic guideline before conducting an review is

a. Be Prepared - with actual performance data of the individual. It could be benchmarked against what was expected from the individual in the past months. If your don't have relevant data to support don't complete go by gut feeling, give the employee the benefit of doubt (and you start working on a process to collate such data in future)

b. Be Honest - Fairness is the bare essential, you need to be very honest and unbiased on the feedback you give to the individual. your honesty would surely help to maintain the motivation level of the employee.

c. Be Calm - While giving honest feedback there could be some hot discussions, but ensure to keep your calm and stick to the problem rather than the individual. Always take a forward-looking approach.

A performance appraisal is necessary from time to time to help both employees and employers. Hence, both parties need to understand why this evaluation must occur and how it can change them for the better. In case you have individual with not so good performance the onus is alos on the manager to provide guidance and regular feedback to help the individual improve.

Also remember the individual performance would have some impact on your performance too, so its always advicable to work jointly to improve.